My Dinner With Morgan at Remedy Diner – November 11-12

ABOUT

Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks have been a part of New York’s downtown theatre scene since the 1970s. The work resists definition as one that layers visuality, movement, text, media, props, memory, history, and violence. For over a year, Chuma and Jenness met weekly to discuss dramaturgy and began developing a new project.

Throughout the past year, The School of Hard Knocks has delved into the ideas of dramaturgy, playwriting, history, and memory that Morgan so generously shared. This event gathers those explorations into an evening that may unfold as discussion, performance, or a mix of both —a true manifestation of the company’s collaborative brain and evolving practice. Jenness, who nurtured the work of countless playwrights, once joked that she had “committed many acts of dramaturgy and had not been arrested yet.” Chuma recalls attending a party where tables were full of chocolate—Morgan ate all the chocolate. “Food is something you cannot bring back,” Chuma says, a phrase that lingers like an image of Morgan’s spirit: full, direct, unrepeatable. The School of Hard Knocks continues to practice its art—at times military and/or childlike—in a world that still feels perilous, yet charged with imagination.

When Chuma and Melissa Flower-Gladney first began working together, Flower-Gladney was researching Japanese gymnastics for a course paper here at the Graduate Center. Yoshiko knew all of the movements. This is how Flower-Gladney became part of the School of Hard Knocks, joining weekly discussions on Zoom with Morgan Jenness and other artists from all over the world. Jenness was slated to perform as a part of the company in December last year, but before her debut, she passed away. Melissa Flower-Gladney was then placed in the performance. Since that moment, Chuma has been performing 43 iterations of My Dinner with Morgan at Remedy Diner, some as discussions in homes, some as performances with dancers and musicians onstage, some in galleries, and some in diners.  

Chapter 42 – Nov 11

Hosted by Timothy

The artists: Julie Lemberger, Jason Llaguno, Sabine Lola Stock, Jeni Dahmus, Timothy Buckley

Yoshiko Chuma, born in Osaka, Japan, arrived 1976 in New York City and made lower Manhattan — then a so-called dangerous place — her home and studio, beginning a career that has spanned more than 45 years and over 100 productions, commissions, and site-specific works. Chuma constantly challenges the notion of performance for both audience and participant, crossing physical and metaphorical borders, often placing herself “in danger’s way” for the sake of art. What is forbidden to some becomes, for her, a center of creation. She confuses documentation with history, reconstructing fragments of past events and transforming them into the present. Having received no formal dance training, Chuma’s methods are spontaneous, intuitive, and experimental. Her process often begins with an abstract image—once, a crumpled piece of paper she handed to her collaborators, asking them to embody its texture and tension. Her performances resist definition and confound interpretation; they stand outside the genealogy of dance and inside the boundless field of lived experience. Since founding The School of Hard Knocks in 1980, Chuma has collaborated with more than 2,000 artists, thinkers, and visionaries worldwide.